Le Sacre du Printemps (2007)

(The Rite of Spring) (2007)

This  “Rite” proceeds from an inversion: instead of a choreography for  dancers, in an umpteenth variation of the iconic piece written by  Nijinsky, Xavier Le Roy sets about staging the gestures of the conductor  as he directs the performance of Stravinsky’s music. Inspired by a  documentary about the Berlin Philharmoniker, Rhythm is it!, the  choreographer examines the relationship between music and movement  while upsetting their order of causality. For, such gestures are the  real motors of music as much as they are determined by it, in a way that  intention and execution seem to become mingled. What Xavier Le Roy  calls the “synchronising machine”, of seeing and hearing, is thus based  on the possibility of an aesthetic, temporal community between the  conductor, the spectators and the musicians. The bodily experience of  listening is accordingly no longer apprehended as a purely auditory  phenomenon, but as an incarnated process, out-smarting the expectations  of the public and reinventing the conditions of their reception.

Source: program of the CND